A Cut of Cajun
by Truest Tears
Summary: AU. He made a lot of mistakes in his life. He's making sure that they don't. He's making sure that she doesn't. Warning: references to selfabuse and druguse. Please R
1. Chapter 1

The job had gone bad and he had had to run.

The closest shelter had been a warehouse, littered with boxes and trash, and only God knows what else, and he had, silent as the dead, slipped inside, making himself comfortable on a stack of crates as he waited out his enemies.

He had noticed her almost right away. A junkie, he guessed.

She needed a shower, a new pair of clothes and a full month of rehab, but then again, who was he to talk, when his hands were shaking for a smoke.

She wasn't smoking, though, or drinking, or sniffing anything. She was cutting.

He knew how to handle pain, but he never understood how someone could just casually grab a blade and wrack it over their skin, taking some type of sick pleasure as the blood spurted out.

There was no relief in that.

He was afraid that she would make a noise and alert the people outside, but she didn't even whimper as she let the blood drain out, then put the knife inside her shoe and wrapped up the cuts with a dirty, blood-stained bandage.

Only afterwards did she close her eyes and lean back into the litter around her, unbothered by the smell and broken glass as she dozed off.

Maria reached for the half-full bottle next to her, and yelped as a boot stepped on it and her hand, effectively crushing both. At least, she thought she heard her hand crack, and the bottle smashed.

"You think dat will help ya, girl? Drink your life away goin ta change it all, eh?"

Someone pulled her up by the collar of her dirty top and hauled her outside into the light. She screamed as the rays hit her, shrouding her head with her arms as she twisted desperately.

He had her locked in some sort of position where she couldn't kick or punch, even though she tried very hard to.

"Let me go, get your hands off!" She screamed.

He let her go and she fell into the dirt that she had been standing on.

"You don' look too steady ta me, girl. Looks like you need a hand.

She rubbed the injured hand, wincing when another lot of pain shot through it.

"I don't need your help—"

"I'm not offering it. You gonna be helped whether ya like it or not, girl."

"Yeah, well I don't see you doing anything about it," she sneered, before a fist shot out and she blacked out.

When she woke up she found herself in a very empty, windowless room. The floor and walls were both made out of wood. There's wasn't even a bed, a chair or a blanket in the room.

Someone had changed the bandage around her arm for a clean one, and her clothes had also been changed. She was wearing a tracksuit, and she had bare feet.

Swearing, she stood up and started to pace around. There was one ventilation draft, but it was as solid as they came. No amount of hitting and scraping would make it come undone.

There was a mat in one corner, she noticed, but the fibers were woven so tightly together she couldn't remove them without a knife.

Two hours later, her throat was parched and her entire body was shaking. That is when she began screaming, defiantly.

An hour after that she was begging.

Then cursing a blue streak.

Outside the door, even he had to wince at some of the cusses she screamed.

An aide went in with a bucket of water the next day and gave her a drink. She took a gulp of water, swished it around in her mouth and spat it into the woman's face. The aide left without a word.

Later on she was offered two thick slices of bread with butter, thick cheese, lettuce, tomato and ham.

She splattered the food around the room.

She had almost lost her voice, and her throat was very dried up when the next lot of water came. This time she drank carefully. Then she banged on the door and was let out to throw up the meager contents of her stomach.

She had been let through a sliding panel in the wall, and was standing in a bathroom, with showers lining the walls.

An aide nodded and left her, not before warning her that if she tried to self-abuse she would be immediately put back in the wooden room.

When she had finished with a long, hot shower with lots of soap another aide came in carrying clothes and helped her get dressed, this time also with a pair of soft white sneakers, and re-bandaged her arm.

"How many others are there?" she asked, her voice was low and scratchy from screaming so much.

"Eight others. But they are already finishing. They've been taught to love life. Unlike you, they would never take it…and they would never abuse it."

"Why?" she asked softly.

The aide looked up, her bright blue eyes shining with strange emotion. "Because he doesn't want you to make the same mistakes he did."


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Marvel, and the X-men, are not mine. Maria is. Please ask before you use her. Thanks.

Archive: Please. Please ask first.

A Cut of Cajun: Chapter Two

She had been moved from the wooden room to a nicer one, with some furniture and a bed. The aide had pointed up at a camera high up on the wall.

"There are only women watching you, but if you attempt to harm yourself, in any way, we will rush down and either put you into the room you were in before or into a laboratory, this time tied down."

Maria only nodded as she sat on the bed. She was tired, and her hands were shaking, but she didn't feel like doing anything.

"Can I…can I smoke?"

"No, child, you may not. Nor drink, or cut—only heal. That is the only thing you are allowed to do here."

Maria only nodded, then leaned back and closed her eyes.

It was the first soft, warm bed she had had in a while. Ever since she became addicted and was thrown out. She hadn't minded the lack of a home, just as long as she could cut and drink all she wanted…she had also smoked and swallowed random pills.

After the blurred darkness of her childhood she had loved the sharp, acute feeling the drugs gave her, the peace and the joy. It made all the bad emotions blot out. She opened her eyes to see light shining through the ceiling, where there was a glass sky-light. She could see the sky, and trees leaned into the view. She thought she saw a pair of wings flash by, and when she closed her eyes again she saw a forest, with a fountain in the center and foxes were bathing in the water. A cub got out, shook itself off and crawled into her lap…she was sitting cross-legged on the grass in a flowing white dress, and a white peacock strode past, its head held high. A tiger crawled out from the bushes, paused to contemplate her, then disappeared in amongst the trees…

When Maria opened her eyes again she saw her hand, where he had stepped on it. It had black and blue bruises forming on it, but she realized that it was the best kind of pain she had ever felt.

From the other side of the door the aide smiled as she heard the even breathing coming from within. It was such a great feeling, to meet a troubled mind and follow it through its progress of recovery.

She herself had suffered a similar fate, on the streets, with shame and sorrow. She had allowed herself to shrink from a proud woman of stature, to a meager, drug-addicted prostitute. Anyone with money could have all she had to offer.

But he had offered her more than money…he had offered her a change of life, and when she proved herself as a completely new, changed, sympathetic but determined person he had given her a job as a nurse, treating the other people that he brought in.

She knew enough about his past to know why he did this…about the accident, how hard he had tried to save the one person that he loved, and how hard he had failed. After her death, he had practically beaten any other addict that he found. And he had healed the poor kids in an amazing way.

He always treated them rough at first. But he earned their respect. He broke them, but then gave them back their honor a thousand fold.

There was a plate of salad, a fresh fruit juice and a plate of whole-meal bread with butter waiting on a tray at the end of the bed.

Maria sat up cautiously, weighing her reaction to being awake. Her hands had stopped shaking.

She carefully sipped the juice, then bit into the bread. Nothing had ever tasted better.

She looked up into the skylight and saw that there was a brilliant sunset streaked across the sky, reflecting in the clouds. She smiled, breathing deeply.

Looking across the room at the camera she tipped the glass slightly in its direction and nodded once. "Thanks," she said, barely audibly.

Then smashed the glass across the side of the tray. Picking up a shard she slit her wrist, leaning back into the pillows as the last of the sun played across the sky.

Blood pooled around her onto her lap. 'What a wonderful way to die,' she thought.

"Get down there immediately!" thundered the head nurse, a large woman of forty two who always wore her hair in a bun.

"Melanie, I told you, so many times, that you not give them glass, ever! You should know better than that. I don't care if you're new, you never give a cutter a glass cup!"

A young aide cowered in a corner. "I'm…I'm so sorry Mrs. Wells, she just seemed so healthy, and happy. I was sure she wouldn't try that."

"Well, she did," answered the woman. "Where's the first aid team, send them down immediately!" her voice roared across the room, and everyone jumped into action. "Get fresh clothes! And when you're done, move her down to the lab."

"Wait, not the lab," cut in a voice from the other side of the room.

Mrs. Wells turned around. "You know as well as I do, Emma, that it is the only way. She is a very cunning girl. But you know what the rules are. He would not be pleased if we broke them."

"Look…" the blue eyes filled with tears. "She has suffered enough. She was happy, I could feel it. Her life must be dreadful, that she never believes that she can get happiness without drugs. Please, do not do this to her." Victoria's face crumpled. "She is just a child, Ellen."

Mrs. Wells bit her lip, and she looked undecided for a moment, but her expression of anger returned presently.

"A child who just attempted to kill herself."

Perhaps she had gone a little far with the piece of glass. The cut had been so much deeper than she had wanted. But it didn't matter. Death had been hanging around her for a long time. Drugs, drink and cutting had been her only firm hold on this earth. Someone had taken them away and she had responded in the only manner that she could.

Violently.

Now Maria could no longer feel anything, or hear anything. It was only a matter of time…and then all time stopped.

Would she go to hell? As far as she was concerned, she was already there.

Would she go to heaven? Probably not. But sitting in that forest, in her dream, with the baby fox in her lap, the tiger looking at her, the white peacock…that had been her heaven.

If the world could only be like that, she would have stayed, but she knew…once the rehab was over they would throw her out again. She had been abandoned one too many times.

She could no longer feel anything at all, but that one, last, perfect sunset sat in her memory forever…and the free, lithe wings of a bird fluttering across the sky.

A.N: Okay, well, there is chapter two. It is much longer than most of my chapters, but it may be a weird one. It is 1:18 right now, I have just finished it, so, well, blame any weirdness on…let's see, caffeine, the summer night's heat, my legs are starting to cramp from sitting down for too long and I'm starting to get writer's block. If you liked A Cut of Cajun, please do not hesitate to say so. It is the only thing that will keep me going.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: X-men are not mine, I do not own them.

A.N.: So, hello again. The darker side of my mind continues. Reviews are still welcome:-)

A Cut of Cajun: Chapter Three

Maria woke up. Her hands were chained to the wall beside her, she had no shoes on. She was in a lab.

She looked across the room to see a smallish girl chained in a similar position.

The girl had shoulder-length brown hair with bright blue and green stripes running through it. She was also dressed in a tracksuit with bare feet.

The hours wore on, with neither moving. Finally the girl across from Maria shifted, then opened a pair of coffee-brown eyes.

They acknowledged each other with the briefest of nods in each others directions, then seemed to slip back down into whatever void they had been residing in.

Maria flipped her hair in front of her face and used it as a shield while she bit down on her lip as hard as she could. She hunched herself up, putting her knees close to her chest so that she could hide the trail of blood.

She felt indifferent while the blood dripped down. It didn't matter if she was in this place forever, or if they chucked her out eventually. She let her mouth well up with blood. What mattered anymore?

The nurse with the blue eyes walked in with a pair of scissors.

She knelt down next to Maria, pulled her hair back and neatly began to snip it off. The hair whisked down onto the floor, until all that was left was a wavy mop.

Then the nurse carefully swiped the lip, put a mild anesthetic on it and a piece of plaster.

"Em Vic?" broke in a voice from across the room.

Maria frowned at the girl. What was she saying, anyway?

"Can I go now, please? You can tell him I'm not going to do it for a while. Not for a long while." The blue-eyes nurse nodded. "Yes, Kitten, I'll tell him that."

Two aides came in presently and took Kitten away. Then the nurse unlocked the cuffs that bound Maria and helped her up, leading her to a shower-room.

When she was dressed the nurse led her down a hall, up a flight of stairs and to a large, oak door.

"Listen here, I do not know your name, your age, where you come from or exactly what you have done, but look at me," she pulled up her white sleeve and showed Maria a mark on the inside of her elbow. "I did drugs too. And you know why? To get away from reality. But what I needed, more than anything, was to get away from the nightmare I was forced to live and into reality. You must too now." She sighed, her hand on the doorknob. "Just remember to be as polite as you can and—" She turned away and rolled down her sleeve.

"You said that the others loved life… what had Kitten done, then?"

The nurse looked up, a sad smile on her face.

"Kitten loves life, a lot. In fact, too much. She wants to be as close to it as possible, experience it in every possible way. That is why she does stupid things, because she thinks that if she is two steps away from death, then when she returns life while be brighter, fuller…"

"Of course, the problem is that one day, she will not return."

"What did she do," Maria asked hesitantly.

"Oh, the usual," said the nurse. Then she narrowed her eyes. "Don't go getting any ideas. What you do is bad enough, without me inspiring you." She turned her back on Maria.

"At least Kitten does it to be connected with life, to strengthen that connection. But you don't do that to be close to life, but to be close to death."

"Death is…numb."

"Of course it's numb, but," she turned around and took one of Maria's hands. "What you have done here, on your arm, to your face, that is not numb. That is not done with feeling, either. That is madness."

"Without it I am mad."

"No…no, you're wrong, it's pain that drives us crazy."

"Yes!" Maria shouted suddenly. "It's the people that spit in your face, the sting of their words. That's the pain. What about what they do to you—at night, when you want to sleep, what about—" she stopped, because she was crying.

The tears were puzzling, unreal. She never cried. She cut, she screamed, she swore, swallowed pills, drank, lit matches on her skin. But tears…they were new.

Slowly, she felt as the pain began releasing itself onto her cheeks.

The nurse wrapped her arms around the girl's thin body, held her as the tears continued, the strange new experience.

As Maria tried to gulp in air, she realized that it was almost as painful as cutting.

Almost as good, too.

Almost.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: As always, I do not own Marvel or the X-men.

A Cut of Cajun: Chapter Four

A.N.: If anyone was wondering, the chapter where Maria is put in "the wooden room" was inspired indirectly by The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise, in which he plays a soldier who, every day, uses "sake" or alcohol, to make the bad memories of his killings go away…anyway, that's what I was envisioning when I wrote that chapter.

I'm most grateful for reviews, as usual I wouldn't dream of writing such gory stuff, and it's nice to know that at least it sounds good. There's something so liberating of letting it all out…Anyway, if I still have your attention, I need to ask a mayor question… Powers or no powers?

On with the story.

The first thing she saw was a comfortable office decorated in dark stained wood with black edgings and what seemed to be authentic carvings spanned the ceiling. There were several tasteful pictures hung up on the wall, one of a dark-haired woman with very long hair, another was an enlarged photo of a group of people that had been framed in an expensive bronze mark.

Maria scanned the place briefly and disinterestedly. The thought flashed through her mind that these things would buy a lot of "merchandise" with her dealer. The thought vanished quickly, and she concentrated on the chair that had its back turned towards her. It was made out of some plush material, and looked comfortable.

She approached silently, but her expression was still empty, uncaring, as she swiveled it around. It was empty.

Tracing a hand over the top of the chair, she glanced at the desk. After so much time either on the streets, then in the synthetic, deprived atmosphere that she had been experiencing the office was a rich contrast.

Maria blinked. Her eyes were still slightly wet from where she had begun to cry while "Em Vic" held her. She sat down in the chair, sinking into it as one hand fingered the knobs on the drawers. Someone would probably appear suddenly, perhaps this time to cut her hands off. She held up the offending gadgets, studying the thin fingers that were responsible for clutching knives and running them over skin and vein….responsible for causing the flow of free, fresh blood to pour down…

She put her hands down, letting them pull the knobs of the drawers and open them, and then gently retrieve and caress the things she found inside, study the pictures, a lock of brown hair tied up with a ribbon, a bracelet made out of silver chain linked together with a dove in the center, its wings spread in flight. Then, there was a letter in the furthest corner of a drawer, it was badly torn and crumpled, as though someone had read it a thousand times.

The hands that had been responsible for so much of their own blood to escape now opened the envelope carefully, took out the page inside, and began to read—

"That's not yours."

The page fluttered from her hands, hands that then reached for the sharpest thing available. She clutched the letter-opener as a figure stepped out from behind a tapestry where he had blended in like a shadow.

"I'm not yours either," she said, her voice sounding scratchy and strange in the room that seemed so associated with beautiful things.

She scooped up the page and dropped the letter-opener, the paper now in a position that showed that she was about to tear it in half.

"An exchange. Let me go, and I…won't tear it to pieces."

He flinched, but only slightly, then continued towards her, his eyebrows raising slightly as he began to smile, then to laugh.

He laughed until she frowned, stepped forward and slapped him. That made him laugh harder.

It was some time later that she realized that he was being sarcastic.

"Y' can't tear dat apart…you can't tear her apart at all….someone beat y' to it."

A chill raced up her spine as he advanced, that demonic smile on his face—

He looked like the maniacal Joker in a pack of cards she had once owned.

What had she done with those cards? Yes, she had burnt them with her lighter, and held them in her hands until the flames touched her fingertips.

The Joker had been the last to go…his grin lasting until the very end, until all that was left was ashes and charred fingertips.

Unconsciously, she began balling the note up, crushing the paper—

She muffled a scream as someone wrenched the letter from her hands by twisting her wrists painfully. He had grabbed her from behind, in a movement so quick she hadn't known how to counteract it.

He pushed her, and she fell to the floor. Memories flooded her mind. Before she could think, she did what she had wanted to do for a long time…

She defended herself.

In a matter of seconds she had scooped up the letter-opener and plunged it into his shin with all her strength.

_Whispers running through her head, of a figure approaching in the night, telling her to be quiet, and not to fight._

_The hurt was over, and she wanted it away…so she cut herself, she still cuts herself to this day._

_She didn't tell, she didn't yell,_

_She should have, but she never did._

_She bid her innocence farewell,_

_And continued into her journey,_

_To Hell._

Maria read the letters, the words scrawled on a now-crumpled page.

She could relate to them. In fact, it was almost as though she had written them….

It felt cold and dark… she curled up into a ball.

She had gone from one Hell to another. And in this inferno, there was no knife…

Nothing to ease the pain.


End file.
